dren
born during the year were scarified on the breast, stomach, or arms, to
denote their reception as servants of their god. Clavigero, on the other
hand, denies that circumcision was ever practiced. It was customary in
Mexico, according to most authorities, to take the children while
infants to the temple, where the priests made an incision in the ear of
the females, and an incision in the ear and prepuce of the males.[18]

Grotins and Arias Montan at one time advanced the idea that the western
coast of South America was peopled by some mutinous sailors from the
fleets of King Solomon, who, in their endeavor to go away far enough to
be out of reach, were driven by winds and chance to the Peruvian coast.
Others have imagined that some of the lost tribes of Israel found their
way eastward to America, by the way of China, to the Mexican coast. The
same ideal tradition has made the lost tribes the fathers of the
Iroquois Nation in the northeastern parts of the United States. An
author, who will be quoted in another part of this work, scouts the idea
that the rite, as performed in America, had any connection or common
origin with the rite performed in Asia and Africa; but, true to his
theory of the climatic causes of the origin of circumcision, he
maintains that it originated here as it did elsewhere, being a
performance born of climatic necessity. He is, however, dissatisfied
with Father Acosta for not being more explicit in relation to the _modus
operandi_ of the Mexican circumcision. The want of being explicit, and
its consequences in this particular regard, may be inferred from a
"Diatribe on Circumcision," by a Mr. Mallet, in an encyclopaedic
dictionary of the last century, in which Mr. Mallet informs his readers
that Mexicans were in the habit of _cutting off the ears and prepuces_
of the newly born. Herrera and Acosta agree with Clavigero in asserting
that the Mexicans simply _bled_ the prepuce. Pierre d'Angleria and other
contemporary writers are as emphatic in asserting that in the island of
Cosumel, in Yucatan, on the sea-board of the Gulf of Mexico and on the
Florida coast, they have observed circumcision by the complete removal
of the prepuce with a stone knife. The Spanish monk, Gumilla, relates
that the Saliva Indians of the Orinoco circumcised their infants on the
eighth day. These Indians also included the females in the observance
of the rite. The same author tells us of the barbarous and bloody
performanc